Hey everybody I know it's been a bit, forgive me!!!
Lately I've been thinking about the internalized sexism in The Polar Bear Explorers' Club, specifically in Stella. So here's an absolute ramble for all 8 of u:
I mean, obviously Stella thinks women can be explorers, but she doesn't fail to make fun of and absolutely hate on her Aunt, Agatha, who would apparently represent the norm for women at the time. She resents her, in fact, for not being a total hippie like Felix is. But Felix has freedom as a man that Agatha doesn't!! Stuff like Stella pointing out her nostril hair (everyone has nostril hair???) and how she dresses just feels so odd. It's like she's saying "you're not even doing gender roles right".
Stella's written as an odd-girl-out and it can make her a little unlikeable at times. The "not like the other girls" approach to her character makes it so almost every other woman in the book is belittled or negatively portrayed.
The least feminine woman in the series would probably be Scarlett, and she's quite literally the antagonist. Cadi I would say is a close second, and while she is liked by Stella it's because she's cool and still girly, to an extent. I can't even really recall other women in the story, because they're all so bleh. The decrepit old witch? Evil for like half the series, then a plot device, then written out. What I'm trying to get at here is that Stella has no meaningful female connections, not really. She doesn't identify with them, or the image of women at the time. Still, she wants to be pretty.
Listen, I'm all for the "WOMEN CAN KICK ASS IN DRESSES!!!" thing, and I appreciate that Stella does wear trousers and stuff on the expedition. But the level of pretty sparkly unicorn dress seems like a last ditch effort to say STELLA STILL LIKES GIRLY THINGS! SHE LIKES WOMEN!
I think we have to blame Felix for Stella's mindset here, a little! I love Felix, you love Felix. But he's a rich, white, man (I know he's gay but like woowww a privileged gay man who's written to be loved the challenges the representation!) that despite his best efforts to project his borderline toxic positivity onto Stella, he still let his distaste for his sister seep into Stella.
Obviously, women in this society are basically raised to hate on each other, and themselves. It's not all Felix's fault, and he's doing pretty well considering.
I think Stella could've done with having some sort of female role models, there can't have only been her, Cadi and Scarlett defying the norm out there. I also think Felix should've made more of an effort to expose her to stuff like that. He is very "women can't be explorers" until he's like "let me use my man money power to let you be an explorer" instead of actually like... Helping to change things himself, he basically puts all the pressure on his 12 year old daughter with no experience exploring or representing women as a group at all into the position of being "the first woman to be an explorer". It just feels like bad parenting, to me.
Anyway, Stella ur my queen 🫶
